New Developer, or Tired or the poor quality Ads, or just want reliable payments, think you could be doing better monetising with Advertising?
Listen up!
Google Adsense, believe it or not is used by a huge portion of Application Developers on Facebook for many reasons, even though technically Google Adsense, isn’t designed for Social Sites like Facebook, and thus won’t always approve. Applications on Facebook is a complex juggle to manage to make profitable, using Adverts is just one of them. “Virtual Currency” is a popular choice to go in addition, but thats a topic for another Article.
Simple reasons why FB Developers usually pick Google over the rest is:
- Huge Database of Quality Ads
- Ease and Speed of Content driven Ads
- Reliability
- Well known Payment system
The Details
I’m not going to try hide if from you, Google TOS doesn’t like you using IFrames to display Ads, but there is simply put no other way.
It shouldn’t put you off, when I personally as well as many other Developers big and small, have used Google Adsense for as much as 1 year+ without concerns.
Facebook though is Partnered with Google Adsense, so I’d like to think they appreciate the extra revenue, just as much as we do, so heres the warning.
Warning:
You run the risk of having the account suspended potentially, since Gooogle Adsense TOS does not permit the use of IFrames to display their ads. so you take my advice at your own risk. Don’t over do it with Ads on your Canvas page, I recommend one, at most 2 per page, and the pages which you put the ads on within the frames, ensure their is a lot of content, and not just keywords there.
Setup
Google does require you to have a website you own, that it will find acceptable to put Google ads on, that it is Google bots can view it. It also has to adheres to their policies so only having a Facebook Application won’t work for getting you in the door.
You need to have something more than a Facebook App like your company or personal website to point Google at registration, then you are free to use the ads anywhere you want, including your Facebook Application.
If you don’t, write up some basic HTML/PHP based website with a few pages, and it should be enough to keep Google happy, or even start a Blog, WordPress templates, are very easy to setup.
After that, It’s not hard, just a bit more than your standard IFrame code, but allows for far more targeting, and has the ability to show a higher quality of ads. Which if you use the right key words, can provide you with not only quality looking ads, but high paying ones.
They do both Ads in Image/video and Text Based. You can even choose to display only one or the other, it defaults to display both. Saying that, most ads which are done which are images are done on the bigger ad sizes, so you won’t get many if any if you rely on small ad boxes. So as most, will want those image based Ads, you’ll want to use the bigger boxes in each of the categories, which are.
Headers – 728×90 and 468×60
Towers – 120×600 and 160×600
Rectangles – 300×250 and 336×280
When setting up each of your Ads, make sure to make them “Targeted-able” for Advertisers, this has seen to increase profits for Ads.
How to do it in Simple
You start by Creating a simple htm page, on your server, and has relevant content on it, and the Adverts you want to display, all should display and be related to your Application itself.
You then create a second page to view that page through “Frames”, and will look almost identical to the 1st page.
Then you need to insert a final piece of Code into your Application to allow you to see these Page(s) via Facebook, through the use of “iFrames”, but without it effecting what Ads are shown.
This only works for Canvas Pages inside an Application, you can’t place it anywhere else to display Ads.
Real Example
*header.htm* – The Actual Ads page with the key words, and targeted references, and of course the google code itself.
Google / Adbrite code – Example shown is used in my App
Code Example Below for (header.htm).
<html> <head> </head> <body style="background: #000000; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;"> <script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_client = "pub-*****************"; /* FB-Header Ad - 728x90 */ google_ad_slot = "*************"; google_ad_width = 728; google_ad_height = 90; //--> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script> </div> <br /> <br /> <p> <b>keywords</b> <i>keywords</i> Content - Atleast a Paragraph <b>keywords</b> <i>keywords</i> </p> <h1>keywords</h1> <h2>keywords</h2> <h3>keywords</h3> <h4>keywords</h4> <h5>keywords</h5> <b>keywords</b> </body> </html>
Real Example
* header-frame * – Ads Preparation page has a frame displaying the Actual Ads Page ( I put keywords here too )
Google / Adbrite frame – Example shown is used in my App
Code Example Below (for header-frame.htm).
<html> <head></head> <frameset border="0" frameborder="0" framespacing="0" rows="100%,*"> <frame src="header.htm" noresize scrolling="no"> </frameset> <br /> <br /> <p> <b>keywords</b> <i>keywords</i> Content - Atleast a Paragraph <b>keywords</b> <i>keywords</i> </p> <h1>keywords</h1> <h2>keywords</h2> <h3>keywords</h3> <h4>keywords</h4> <h5>keywords</h5> <b>keywords</b> </html>
Real Example
*Facebook App Canvas Page – Include php file or similar* – Insert this code as FB:Iframe code on the Canvas Page.
Battlelords FB App – Example is in the header
<fb:iframe src=*server address* /includes/header-frame.htm id="games-header" name="games-header" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" height="90" width="728" />
Explained…
The Code Colored in Red needs to be changed to something specific to your Adverts, the ones done in orange are default settings, but I advise you tweak them a little to your liking. I hope my code is self-explanatory enough, afterall this is a Tip for Developers of Applications only, if you are unsure or stuck on about anything feel free to contact me.
As always Keep track of my Latests Blogs at http://chris.bourton.us/blog/
Hello,
Can i take a one small pic from your site?
Thank you
Rufor
Any Pictures you take from this site would have to come with expressed written permission, and how they’d be used. I’d also request if they are my original work, they link back to this site. Contact me, at chris {AT} bourton [DOT] us . If you still want to use the Pictures.
Wonderful Advice, thanks!
Great article, Can this be used else where on FB or just Applications. Proberly not?